Abstract:
Tropical mountain peatlands are long-term carbon stores that regulate water and greenhouse-gas exchange in high-elevation landscapes, yet their sensitivity across time scales remains poorly quantified. We combined two years of ecosystem-scale eddy covariance (CO₂, CH₄, N₂O) with chamber and dissolved-carbon measurements at conserved and drained peatlands in the Colombian Andes, and synthesized new ²¹⁰Pb-dated peat-core records spanning the last century across multiple Andean sites. The tower observations reveal pronounced seasonality in carbon exchange despite minimal temperature variation: short hydrologic excursions—especially lower water tables during El Niño–related dry periods—trigger rapid increases in ecosystem respiration and net carbon loss at the drained site, while the conserved site remains a persistent carbon sink outside droughts. CH₄ dominates the CO₂-equivalent climate forcing at the conserved site due to higher water tables, even though the carbon mass balance is not CH₄-dominated. In contrast, the ²¹⁰Pb cores primarily register plant production showing coherent, multi-decadal patterns in peat accumulation that track regional temperature anomalies more than elevation. Warmer anomalies are associated with higher accumulation rates, whereas cooler periods show reduced accumulation, with disturbance further depressing long-term carbon gains.
Speaker: Assoc. Prof. Juan C. Benavides
Affiliation: Faculty of Environmental Studies, Javeriana University, Colombia
Time: 14:30 PM, Tuesday, November 18, 2025
Venue: Offline: The Conference Hall in XTBG
Online: Tencent Meeting ID: 659 765 636
